No More Tolerance For Zero Tolerance (Cathryn Crawford)

Once, long ago, there was legitimate reasoning behind the zero tolerance policy in our public schools that could be fathomed - but there’s also legitimate reasoning behind the saying that good intentions pave the way to hell. Originally, zero tolerance measures were aimed at dangerous kids who brought guns and drugs to school. However, the number of items and behaviors now considered suspension or expulsion-worthy has grown to an infinitely ridiculous amount.

The terms regarding these items and behaviors are conveniently vague, as well, and vary from place to place. There is zero tolerance for weapons - what is a weapon? Is it a butter knife, a laser pointer, a beeper? The same question applies to drugs. Is a children’s multi-vitamin a drug? What about an inhaler? Certs? Mouthwash?

What about zero tolerance for “disrespect” or “insubordination”? Is that simply whatever the administrator of the school deems it to be? For example - in Mississippi, there is a law that allows students older than 13 to be expelled if they are “disruptive” in class three times over the course of the school year. What power that gives to administrators – how convenient for them! With the vague wording of these laws, they can remand any child that they see as a troublemaker to an alternative school so that they no longer have to “deal with” them. What qualifies as a disruption? Is that chewing gum in class or passing notes or using profanity - or pulling out a gun and threatening the teacher with it?

Futures – in the guise of college scholarships – are being put in jeopardy because of zero tolerance. Consider the case of the 17 year old honors student from Arkansas that was sentenced to 45 days in alternative school because his father accidentally left a scraper and pocketknife in the car the weekend before. Despite the pleas from the father, the school system refused to budge on the inviolate “weapons possession” punishment. Then there was the 18 year old girl who was arrested and charged with a felony for having a kitchen knife in her car that she had been using to open boxes. She was denied her right to graduate and she now has a criminal felony on her record. Is this the ultimate aim of zero tolerance?

Does constant fear of the tiniest infraction bringing severe punishment actually cause children to respect teachers and school administrators? Hardly. On the contrary, it fosters an attitude of resentment, disrespect, and deep anger towards authority. It also leaves no room for a positive relationship between children and teachers – there is, for the child, always a fear of punishment for the slightest unintended wrongdoing. It leads to a form of self-censorship that is representative of life under dictatorships.

Do we really want the cookie-cutter kids that zero tolerance strives to create, devoid of fire and passion and intelligence and creativity? Do we want kids that are always afraid to speak their own mind and stand up for themselves for fear of disrupting a classroom and being suspended or expelled for it?

Perhaps the only positive aspect of zero tolerance is the likelihood that the children who had to endure it will be the ones who are likely to change it.

Cathryn Crawford is a student at the University of Texas. She can be reached at cathryncrawford@washingtondispatch.com.

Unfortunately, that's what it will take before people wake up to the fact that "Zero Tolerance" needs to be tempered with a degree of exercised common sense.

Common sense would fix SO many of this country's problems, but it's absent in virtually every element of our government. I can't tell you how relieved I am to finally have my kids (graduated) out of our local school system. They were CONSTANTLY introducing new rules and zero-tolerance policies on everything under the sun. Many were so void of logic that I could only conclude that there was some idiot in the system whose only job responsibility was the creation of new rules.

There was a similar case years ago, where a student on a school bus had an attack that was bordering on anaphalactic (sp?) shock. Another student used her escape inhaler on the victim. The comment by the ER physician was that quick thinking by the latter student most probably saved the former's life. Meant nothing, violation of the "zerp tolerance" drug policy.
When I was in high school in the 70's, there were some seniors who were on the local volunteer fire department and rescue squad. Just about all of the rescue squad people had a full kit in the back of their cars (the first responders are on the scene many times well before the ambulance arrives). These days the first aiders would be arrested for having a set of bandages, dressings, scissors, etc in their vehicles.

Unionized public employees are about as enthusiastic about using "judgement" as vampires are about cooking with garlic. This is how "zero tolerance" was developed, to avoid the need to do so.

Unionized or not, we need to force using reasonable judgement and authority, by repealing these asinine laws and terminating administrators who exhibit poor judgement and/or lack of discipline. If they don't like it, well there's always openings in the food service and housekeeping industries.

A friend of mine has an asthmatic girl whom the school system has trouble accepting (med needs/perscriptions, etc.). Since a few of the teachers are unwilling to allow the girl her meds, Mommie is unwilling to let them keep their jobs.

Score so far: Mommie - 5, idiot teachers - 0.

She fires 'em by knowing the teacher's manual and then making them observe it. Strictly. It works, ask the Fired Five.

Moral: You don't have to take the abuse of an out of control teacher.

Moral: You don't have to take the abuse of an out of control teacher.

I actually helped my aunt take care of the problem with my cousin's school when they tried to make him keep his inhaler in the nurse's office. My fiancee is a labor/employment lawyer. She lobbed a little phone call to the principal and mentioned four little words- Americans With Disabilities Act. They freaked out and stopped bugging him about it.

ADA has the same effect on any poor, dumb, soul working in the Bowels of the Beast (any bureaucracy). Because of the inherent conflicts betweeen their socialism, the contradictory regs characteristic of bureaucracies, and human nature, there is nearly always something that the 'crat either didn't do and was supposed to, or did do and wasn't allowed to so do.

In any case, find the appropriate reg and your problem 'crat is meat on the table. Nothing like the smell of Fired 'Crat in the morning (with apologies to Coppola).

>What's wrong with you?!
>Why do you send your daughter to a school that won't let >her keep her inhalator?
>How can you sleep at night?
>If more parents told schools they were going to pull their >kids out immediately if they can't have their inhalators >with them, you'd see the NEA begging the legislatures to >change the law.

Excuse me, but how dare you judge me!!

I send her to a school that I have to send her to. Do you have an extra $20,000 a year to send her to a private school? Or are you going to bail me out when I take her out of school and go to jail for it? I have fought, I have pitched a fit and I have decided to send her to school with her inhaler hidden away in a pocket of her book bag. Did you bother to ask before you attacked me? No, I only stated what they did, and expected. But you don't care because you merely attacked. So glad to know I have met the perfect parent. (NOT)

You are a snotty person and need to keep your snotty posts to yourself.

One of these days, an asthmatic or diabetic kid is going to die because of these rules and his or her parents will end up with a multi-million dollar judgment against the school board. I would even support negligent homicide charges against the administrators in such a situation.

It's already happened...

1991 death of a New Orleans high school student, Catrina Lewis, who was delayed by security guards before being allowed to get her inhaler from the office. When it didn’t help, she asked school staff to call an ambulance; instead they spent a half-hour trying to call her mother first. Catrina’s sister, another student, finally called 911 herself, but emergency help arrived too late. In 1996, a New Orleans judge ordered Lawless High School’s acting principal, a school counselor, and the school board to pay $1 million in damages to Catrina’s family.

Good article. It continues to mystify me that people put their kids in the hands of these people. What kind of education do they think their kids will get from morons, who do not share their values, and who mock the very things most parents believe in?

Things are not going to get better until the schools are returned to local control. The teachers and administrators have not the least sense that they work for the parents, or that they owe the parents any respect at all because in fact they don't work for the parents, and they owe the parents nothing. Until that basic fact changes nothing changes.

And none of that is going to change until there is an effective private alternative to the public schools, when the public schools become just one of an array of education choices available to parents, and that isn't going to change until parents have control over their education tax dollars.

Los vientos y la lluvia lo han lavado limpio...

De qué se refiere eso?

By perpetuating a climate of fear in the schools, education is eliminated and a new generation of ignorant slaves is produced - thus perpetuating Liberal domination of society.

Well, not quite. There IS only one good thing about zero tolerance. Students and parents alike are starting to wake up about exercising their Constitutional rights. It's a heck of a way to get an education, since rights are not taught...nor honored..in school.

Long-term, students who were victimized by these policies will one day grow up to sit on school boards, run for elective office, become doctors and lawyers, serve in the military or the police force, and make life an absolute living hell for those who perpetuated this horrible system of injustice on them.

I've heard more than one victim say they would homeschool their own children. Zero tolerance will eventually serve the cause of freedom, the more it grows, the more victims, the more students will not be attending their public indoctrination centers and the whole system will eventually collapse.

Parents whose children have been unfairly punished have put up websites to educate the public.

http://www.endzerotolerance.com
http://www.savebrian.org
http://totallyunjust.hypermart.net

We're fighting back.

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